


Survival

by ambiguously



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dubious Consent, Extra Treat, F/F, F/M, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-01 20:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16290869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Qi'ra does what she has to in order to survive.





	Survival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



Lady Proxima taught Qi'ra how to beg, how to steal, how to stretch one day's worth of food into four, how to sleep when she was freezing cold, and how to smile when she wanted to scream. Her lessons were harsh, and few were intentional.

"Survive, you stupid child," Lady Proxima told her once, as Qi'ra lay burning with fever from an infection. Proxima ordered one of her guards to pour stinging, sour medicine into Qi'ra's squirming mouth. "Survive" was the root of all her lessons, and Qi'ra learned it well.

Surviving meant keeping her head down when Proxima sold her for her treachery, not fighting to escape the slave trader's hired muscle when she knew she'd never make it to an escape pod. She talked up her brain to the bored slaver, offering to keep his books and count his credits. He took a look at her face and ordered her to go bathe. The customers didn't want a pretty face that smelled of sewer.

She bathed. She put on the clingy, revealing dress she was given. She smiled at her fellow captives as they were led to auction. When the handsome man came to look her over, Qi'ra kept her smile and told him she'd been chosen to receive cybernetic implants from her last owner before the sudden need for her sale, and she'd be glad to finish the process. Walking around with a cyborg brain would be better than lying down, in a bed or under the dirt. He laughed, as if seeing this plan in her eyes, and he paid the slaver the fee for her.

"What's your name, girl?" he asked as he led her away.

"Qi'ra." She hesitated. "What should I call you, Master?"

"I'm not your master, Qi'ra. I'm your new friend. Call me Dryden."

Qi'ra knew how to survive. She knew exactly what he was and what she was to him. She said to her new master, "Of course, Dryden."

Crimson Dawn was just another gang, but one among the stars and out in the sunlight rather than in the dank underbelly of Corellia. Dryden Vos demanded her loyalty, and forced her to wear the mark of their group on her body, just as he did beneath his clothes. Dryden was terrifying, and surviving meant not giving into her terror, meant learning his moods, meant coaxing from him in pieces the truth of his own past. She gave him her mind, offering up her skills with numbers and with people. He didn't demand her body as she'd feared he would. They became lovers as she knew they would, but only out of boredom as his ship drifted between worlds. Even if she always felt the pull of the chains he held on her, he never tugged at them when they were intimate. Before, yes, and after they'd dressed, but she was a lie he told himself, and Qi'ra let herself believe while he did. She mouthed the scars he bore from his old master's cruelty, and she sighed as he kissed the brand at her wrist, and they understood one another.

It wasn't love. They both knew better.

She survived and rose within the ranks of his organization as separate thing from the time she spent in his bed, no matter what the others thought. Qi'ra did have a sharp mind, and she gave it to his use utterly. Strike here. Use this group of mercenaries. The provisions can be stretched across the guards this way. Dryden took her counsel, and they both succeeded, and Qi'ra lived a little longer.

She didn't kill him because of Han. He thought she did, Han thought she did, even the dark spectre who pulled his strings believed it. Qi'ra knew better. Dryden was making mistakes out of personal anger. That wasn't a survival trait. She wouldn't let him take her down with him.

Her new master was uninterested in her body, but he took passing interest in her mind. Crimson Dawn needed a firmer hand, Maul told her, and he directed her in great detail. Qi'ra followed his orders as much as she could, altering the plans when she saw they would be futile or needlessly dangerous. Maul was unstable, driven by passions she could not guess. She did what she could to survive his capricious commands and his rages, and she slept alone in a sumptuous, cold bed.

Maul was also not interested in the growing scale of attacks from Enfys Nest and her marauders, save the time and money they cost from his other pursuits. "Deal with them," was all he told her, a dangerous order.

Dryden would have ordered attacks. Qi'ra dealt with the threat by meeting it face to face.

"You don't have to do this," said the girl, fierce and beautiful without her mask as they stood at odds. "The cartels are a dead end, Qi'ra, destined to fight like curs for scraps. You can be so much more. Help us."

"Leave us in peace or die," Qi'ra told her, even as her soul knew the truth of the girl's words.

"I could say the same to you." Enfys stepped closer. Her eyes blazed with belief in her cause, like a million martyrs before her. The rebellious sparks in the galaxy would be crushed under the Emperor's heel. Enfys would be crushed with all the rest.

Qi'ra ordered her men to withdraw. She had no desire to do the Emperor a favor today or any other day.

"I meant it," Enfys called after her.

Qi'ra kept ahead of the Empire, kept ahead of the marauders, kept in front of Maul, until the day her own shuttle was shot out of the sky, crashing to the ground amidst her enemies. She was dragged, half-conscious, to where the leaders of the little group met. Most of them called for her head. Enfys Nest said, "No. Keep her bound, and treat her wounds. She's a prisoner. We don't harm our prisoners."

"She's Crimson Dawn!" said one of the others. "She'd have any of us executed on the spot."

"And we're not, which is why we won't."

Apart from her captivity, Qi'ra wasn't ill-treated. She'd slept in colder places. She'd eaten far worse food. Enfys Nest watched her at her meals, saying little. She'd expected interrogation or another sales pitch, not silence.

"I'm not going to tell you anything," Qi'ra said.

"I didn't ask you any questions."

Qi'ra ate her bread. She'd been here three days. She found she didn't miss the luxury of the yacht, not with Dryden's ghost there reminding her of her true place, not with Maul always contacting her with more demands. This rough cage wasn't much of an improvement over the gilded one, but she saw its potential.

"You know, you could deploy your people more efficiently."

"What do you mean?" Enfys asked.

"I've been watching your attacks. You keep to too tight a group. With two more Riders, you could easily surround your targets."

Enfys laughed. "You're offering me advice on how to attack your mercenaries better?"

"They're not my mercenaries any longer. Also, you could use better portioning with your rations. You could easily feed twice the people if you stretched these better." She smiled at Enfys, who gave her a lopsided smile in return.

"I'll take that into consideration."

"Do. I've taken your offer into consideration as well."

Enfys and her people had no good reason to trust her, but Qi'ra was patient, and she was intelligent, and they weren't foolish enough to turn down an asset. Enfys Nest removed her physical bonds, and Qi'ra accepted the invisible ones that replaced them. From time to time she considered she might owe her loyalty to her last master, but the sight of the brand on her wrist told her otherwise. She'd owed Dryden her life, and she'd taken his. She owed Crimson Dawn nothing it had not already taken from her long ago. She bent her mind to the task of taking from Crimson Dawn everything she could, all for the sake of the approval in her new owner's eyes.

"You understand you don't have to do this," Enfys said, weeks later as they made their hushed way together into her tent. "You know you're free, don't you?" Her cheeks were flushed with anticipation, her heart racing where their hands met. Yet she was worried about Qi'ra, worried about someone who'd tried to kill her, worried that she held a chain she couldn't see. Enfys was the kindest mistress Qi'ra could have ever hoped for, and because of this, Qi'ra would let herself believe that they were equals and friends and lovers. If they told each other the lie enough times, she might survive to see the day it became the truth.

"I know," Qi'ra said, and she kissed her, and she lived.


End file.
